


paint me in trust (i'll be your best friend)

by bellawritess



Category: All Time Low (Band)
Genre: :)), Alternate Universe - High School, Flirting, Fluff, Friendship, Harry Potter References, Harry Potter spoilers, IS THAT SOMETHING PEOPLE NEED TO TAG ANYMORE??????, M/M, Pre-Slash, Psychology, also, kitchen tables are for lovers, peyton i love you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:01:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29553903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellawritess/pseuds/bellawritess
Summary: It wouldn’t be a Sunday study session if Alex didn’t pretend to flirt with Jack.
Relationships: Jack Barakat/Alex Gaskarth
Comments: 14
Kudos: 22





	paint me in trust (i'll be your best friend)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Woahsos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woahsos/gifts).



> so!
> 
> this fic is LONG overdue. my dear [peyton](http://archiveofourown.org/users/woahsos), this is for you, and i'm SO SORRY it took me this long to write!!!! i've owed you since the end of december and i had started something that never went anywhere and then just like fully ground to a halt and. i have no excuse. then the last two days you kept me company, sitting at our virtual kitchen table in our own worlds doing homework together or while you read, and last night i was like. wow. i love peyton. also, this would make a good fic. and it turns out i was right :) 
> 
> so please accept this, my IOU and thank-you note and love letter to you all in one. i can only hope that one day we can sit at a real kitchen table together but for now i hope that this will suffice. i love your company, i love talking to you, i love the faces you make when you read, and most importantly i love you so much <3
> 
> want to apologize in advance for all the psychology in this. as per usual i very much got carried away. also did you know that i love psychology! well i do. and i took AP psych. and as a result so is jack barakat. i hope the psych stuff doesnt like, make the fic worse. or boring. or whatever. though if you find behavioral psychology boring i really think you're beyond salvation anyway but never mind
> 
> title from human by dodie :)

Their sacred kitchen table is strewn with half-eaten packs of saltines and Oreos. The four-person table becomes a space for two, occupying right-side seats on opposite sides of the table. Alex likes to stretch his legs out underneath the table to rest his feet on the chair to Jack’s left. Unless he curls up, arms around his knees to hold his book open. Jack keeps his own legs criss-cross underneath him, switching which one is over and which is under every few minutes so he doesn’t lose all feeling in his feet.

His eyes follow the words to the bottom of the page, but he’s reaching for a cracker at the same time and hasn’t absorbed any of it. Fuck. Stuffing the cracker in his mouth, he starts over from the top of the paragraph, picking up his pencil again.

  * _positive = adding something_
  * _negative = taking something away_
  * _reinforcement = increase behavior_
  * _punishment = decrease behavior_



“Wait, what?” he says out loud.

Alex looks up briefly. “What?”

“This is just really confusing.” Jack sighs and leans back in his chair. “It’s fine. I kinda get it, it’s just really not, like. Intuitive.”

“Explain it to me,” Alex says, closing the book with his thumb inside to mark his page. He leans forward on his elbows, expectant.

“So in operant conditioning,” Jack says, scanning the textbook to make sure he’s got the right words — the last section had dealt with classical conditioning, which is apparently not the same, though Jack has no doubt he will mix them up on the quiz, “there’s positive and negative reinforcement and punishment. But positive and negative don’t mean good and bad. Positive just means something is added and negative means something is taken away. So you can have positive punishment and negative reinforcement.”

“Confusing.”

“Yeah, really fucking confusing.” Jack taps the end of his pencil idly against his notebook.

Alex nods. “What’s an example of positive punishment? Adding something to punish someone?”

“Well, punishment doesn’t necessarily mean, uh, punishment,” Jack says, shaking his head. Whoever is responsible for choosing the vocabulary of behavioral psychology will be receiving a strongly-worded letter from Jack. Why couldn’t they just have invented new words? Or used existing ones the way they’re _supposed_ to be used? “Punishment means you’re decreasing a behavior. Reinforcement means you’re increasing a behavior. So I guess that usually means punishment is a bad thing, but like, not in a normal way.” He groans loudly and drops his head onto the pages of the textbook with a thud. “Fuck this. I’m gonna fail this quiz. I’m gonna fail this entire class.”

“Shut up, no you’re not,” Alex says, kicking at him under the table. “Keep explaining. I want to understand positive and negative reinforcement or whatever.”

“No you don’t,” Jack whines. “You just want to test me to see if _I_ understand it.”

“Well if you understand it well enough to make me understand it, then you’ll be fine on the quiz.”

This is Alex’s favorite tactic. Jack wishes it didn’t work so well, so he’d have real cause for complaint, but attempting to explain what he’s just learned to Alex has never failed to solidify it in his mind. So many of his weekly reading quizzes have only been passed thanks to memories resurfacing at familiar vocabulary words or images on the page, reminding Jack of when he’d pointed at different parts of his and then Alex’s head just to identify the locations of different brain areas or drawn the dashed perimeter of a square to explain the Gestalt principle of closure.

And yeah, he knows the old adage about how if you can’t teach it to someone else, you don’t understand it well enough. Maybe Jack’s never had this much trouble understanding a class, or maybe he’s just never had anyone to teach before, but he’s pretty sure it wouldn’t work as well if it wasn’t Alex. That precept can be applied to most of Jack’s life, to be fair; everything is better with Alex. 

Including Jack’s grades.

“Jack,” Alex prompts, when Jack doesn’t react. “Explain. Negative reinforcement. Come on.”

With an almighty groan, Jack sits up and looks Alex in the eyes. “Okay. Fine. Positive reinforcement is when you add something to increase a behavior. Like, um, if every time you got a hundred on a quiz your parents took you to get ice cream.”

“They do,” Alex says, straight-faced. “Your parents don’t do that?” Jack kicks him and Alex laughs. “Okay, sorry, I’m listening.”

“Negative reinforcement is taking away something to increase behavior,” Jack continues. He glances down at his textbook even though he remembers the example they’d given: “Like when you’re driving and the seatbelt thing beeps really loudly until you put your seatbelt on. The beeping stops when you put on your seatbelt, so: increasing behavior by taking away a stimulus.”

“You sound really smart,” Alex remarks, an innocuous smile on his face. He cocks his head. “Go on.”

“Do you want to learn this or not?” Jack demands. “Stop flirting with me.”

“I’m not flirting with you!” Alex grins. It wouldn’t be a Sunday study session if Alex didn’t pretend to flirt with Jack. When the textbook material is less complicated, Jack pretends to flirt back. Well. He flirts for real, but it’s not like Alex will know the difference. On the off-chance that Alex is also flirting for real, Jack is prepared. In the meantime, he doesn’t mind the game.

 _Usually._ Not right now. “Are you done?”

“Yes, okay, fine, sorry.” Alex rolls his eyes and reaches for an Oreo. “Continue.”

“Positive punishment,” Jack says. “Adding something to decrease a behavior. Like when you tell someone off to get them to stop doing something annoying.”

“Like you telling me to stop every time I flirt with you.”

“You don’t respond well to positive punishment,” Jack deadpans. “Clearly.”

Alex laughs. “I would if you meant it.”

Jack definitely does not want to continue down this avenue of conversation. He knows how it’ll end; Jack will say _you think I don’t mean it when I tell you to stop?_ and Alex will say _well, do you?_ and Jack will be at a loss.

Because of course he doesn’t mean it. But Alex doesn’t mean it when he’s flirting either. So it’s kind of a trap either way.

“ _Negative_ punishment,” he says instead, ignoring when Alex barks a laugh — he’s not trying to be _subtle_ , okay, he just really wants to move on — to quickly skim his textbook. “Negative punishment is taking something away to decrease a behavior. So like, if you were texting in class and the teacher took away your phone. He wants you to stop texting, so he removes a stimulus.”

“Easy, I’d just keep texting on my secret second phone,” Alex says breezily, shrugging.

Jack snorts. “Okay. Sure. Anyway.” He sighs. “I think I get it now.” There was never going to be another ending to this. No doubt when Jack sits down to take the reading quiz tomorrow in class he’ll see the term _positive punishment_ and think back to this conversation, Alex’s fringe falling over his eyes, his cheeky grin as he’d bit into his cookie, casually teasing Jack about flirting with him.

“Attaboy,” Alex says, a note of pride in his voice. “Smartest guy I know.”

“If I’m the smartest guy you know, you need to meet more guys,” Jack huffs, picking his pencil up off the page. “Thanks. You can go back to your book.”

“Wh—” Jack glances up in concern to see an offended expression on Alex’s face. “Don’t brush me off like that! You’re obviously smart. You’re taking AP Psych. And _passing._ Impressively. And making my dumb ass understand stuff like positive punishment.”

Jack rolls his eyes. “Maybe it was a comment on your love life.”

“Very funny.”

“If _I’m_ your first choice…” Jack trails off. He’s teasing, and hopefully his wry smile makes that obvious. Alex squints at him.

“Go back to your reading,” he finally says. He rests his chin on the knee drawn up to his chest and flips his book back open. This has to be his fifth time rereading the _Harry Potter_ series. How he doesn’t get bored of them is beyond Jack.

Heaving a sigh, Jack looks back down at his textbook. _Shaping._ Awesome. Looks like a blast.

* * *

Sometimes, Alex brings his own reading. Lately, though, he’s been getting it done on his own time — some bullshit about _getting ahead_ or whatever, nothing Jack cares to emulate. It had prompted Jack to ask if Alex didn’t want to come over anymore — Sunday study sessions would undoubtedly be less, well, interesting for Alex if Jack were the only one reading for school — but Alex had emphatically shaken his head. “I’ll bring a book,” he’d said, “or math homework or something.”

(He’s never once brought his math homework. Neither of them really do their math homework. Whatever, you can’t have it all.)

It’s probably not the best system, but it’s better than what Jack had been doing before, which was, uh, _not_ doing the reading. This way everyone’s happy; parents are pleased that homework is getting done, and Jack and Alex get to hang out without getting behind on schoolwork. When they finish their homework they watch a movie or play video games or whatever before Alex has to go home. More and more, he’s started staying for dinner. Sunday has become all but synonymous with Alex.

What he’ll do when they go to college, Jack has no idea. Crash and burn, probably. They’re going to have to start a weekly FaceTime call just to keep Jack from falling behind. 

The thing is, Jack is only productive when Alex is in the room. On the other hand, he is incredibly productive when Alex is in the room. A part of him suspects that he wants to impress Alex, but that part of him also says things like _the flirting is all real_ and _this psychology stuff is really fucking interesting_ so Jack tends to ignore it when he can. There’s no point questioning the equation. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, isn’t that the expression? The important thing is that it _does_ work. Alex seems happy to come over just to sit in silence at the kitchen table to which they stake claim every Sunday from noon onward, keeping Jack company while he forces himself through pages of vocab words, case studies, and anecdotes.

Saltines and Oreos are permanent and essential fixtures in the routine. The whole structure would collapse without them.

One section before the end of the chapter, Jack steals a glance at Alex.

He doesn’t get to see it a lot, too focused on his own reading, but Alex is incredibly reactive when he reads. From the look on his face, no one would guess that this is one of his favorite books. Right now his hand is pushing back his hair, a frozen picture of pure distress like he _hadn’t_ known that Sirius would fall through the veil, or whatever. As Jack watches, Alex presses his fist over his mouth, face scrunched up and squinting against phantom pain like he can’t keep looking yet can’t bear to look away.

Jack often feels that way about Alex.

“Fuck!”

The outburst is followed by the book slamming against the tabletop. Jack practically jumps out of his skin. “You good?”

“I hate this book,” Alex moans, head falling into his folded arms on the table.

“I bet.”

“Like I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. Why do I do it, Jack? Why do I keep reading the same books?” Alex picks his head up and gives Jack a beseeching look. “Do I hate myself?”

“Yes?”

“Obviously the answer is yes,” Alex grumbles. He makes a very loud noise of distress and then straightens up. “It’s cool. I didn’t like Sirius that much anyway.”

“You’re more of a James,” Jack tells him.

Alex physically jerks. “Sirius was James’s best fucking friend! That’s even worse! That’d be like if you died!”

“Okay, holy shit,” Jack says. “Let’s not talk about me dying, how about.”

“I’m saying I don’t _want_ you to die. I’d be devastated.”

“Yeah, so would I!” 

“So?”

Jack stares. “So _what?_ They’re fictional!”

“Not to me!”

Jack rolls his eyes. “Alright. Well. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“ _Thank_ you,” Alex says, making a face at Jack, who makes one back. “Are you done?”

Fuck. The reading. “Almost. One more section.”

Alex makes a gesture like _get on with it_ and picks up his book. He inhales deeply like preparing himself to walk into battle and opens it back up. A smile pulls at Jack’s mouth. Alex has barely brought his gaze back to the pages when he lifts it to see Jack smiling like an idiot.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Jack says, smiling bigger.

“Stop watching me,” Alex says, although now a smile dances over his face too. “Do your reading.”

“Okay, I’m doing it. Read your book.”

“Fine.”

“Okay.”

Jack looks back down at his textbook, which has grown profoundly uninteresting in the past five minutes. He reads some of the first paragraph and then puts his pencil back to his notebook.

  * _modeling: attention, retention, reproduction, motivation_



Somehow he knows Alex is watching him even before he looks. This time he's the one asking “What?” of a smiling Alex.

Just like Jack had, Alex hums, “Nothing.”

If this is part of the flirting game, Jack hasn’t read the rules for it. 

He would call Alex’s bluff if he knew what to say, but there might not be any bluff to call. Alex could very well be fucking with Jack by copying his weirdo actions. That would fit into the game.

Except Jack knows Alex’s teasing smile from his real one, and this one is real. Real smiles don’t belong in the flirting game. Real smiles go with real feelings. That’s why Jack’s had been real.

“Alright,” Jack says, with a suspicious face that’s mostly for show. Alex nods, unbothered, and Jack goes back to his textbook to read the last of the chapter. 

Ten minutes and the remaining saltine crackers later, he finally closes his notebook, then closes his textbook, stacking them with finality. Alex looks up. “Done?”

“Fucking done,” Jack announces, stretching out his legs and arms and slumping back against the chair. Alex cheers. “Ugh. I think I’m just gonna drop out.”

Alex laughs. “Great, I’ll join you.”

“Our grades in calc,” Jack says, snorting. “They might just kick us out.”

“Probably. Who cares. I’d be a kickass dropout. We could busk.”

“We could busk without dropping out.”

“I’m supporting your dreams of dropping out,” Alex says seriously. 

“Okay, fine. I’m in.” Jack gives Alex a cheesy grin, and Alex mirrors it right back at him, perfectly in tune with Jack as always.

“Wanna watch something?” Alex asks, pushing out his chair and leaping to his feet. “Or play? I finally learned ‘Feeling This.’”

“Finally!” Jack also stands and steps away from the table. “Yeah, let’s play it. I’ve literally been waiting for you to learn it.”

“I know, I know.”

“Wait, c’mere,” Jack says. Alex obliges without hesitation. His hair is sticking up from his full-body reading experience, so Jack steadies him with one hand on his shoulder and uses the other to comb through Alex’s hair and flatten it. His gaze flickers down to Alex’s face, where he sees a small, quiet smile, a secret just for Jack to share.

Jack pats his cheek and steps back. “All good.”

“Thank you,” Alex says, grinning wider. He leans over the table to grab the pack of Oreos and then steps past Jack, shouting _get ready for action!_

The smile sits warm and cozy in Jack’s chest as he follows. If fixing Alex’s hair and watching him read are what earn him such a smile, then Jack will readily redouble his efforts. As it happens, he is not immune to positive reinforcement.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading :) i'm on tumblr [@clumsyclifford](http://clumsyclifford.tumblr.com/) come say hi! or talk psych with me i am down to talk psych at all hours


End file.
